Pickyourtrail, a self-service platform that lets travellers create, customise and book international vacations

Pickyourtrail has raised $3M in total. We talked with its co-founders Hari Ganapathy and Srinath Shankar.

How would you describe Pickyourtrail in a single tweet?

Pickyourtrail is a self-service platform that lets travellers create, customise and book international vacations in a jiffy.

How did it all start and why?

Pickyourtrail began as an attempt to break how vacations are currently been planned and booked by travellers. At our very heart, we want to create happiness and not sell packages. The seed to all this began in August 2012 when co-founders — Hari & Srinath went on a Europe trip.

Ardent travellers themselves, the duo had put in more than 2 months to fully craft their vacation. This included planning end-end, bookings, and visa processing. It was during their trip they stumbled upon fellow travellers who were all on packaged tours. Interacting with them, Hari & Srinath understood they were literally rushed between destinations and their urge to discover new experiences wasn’t fulfilled. The travellers, on the other hand, were amazed to see the flexibility Hari and Srinath had in their itinerary and that piqued their interest.

Once back home, the duo was bombarded with pings asking for details on how they went about planning the entire trip. These interactions slowly multiplied and this lead to an idea that will forever change their career roadmaps!

What have you achieved so far?

We have been growing 80% YoY. And aim to grow 5X over the next 2–3 years.

Products: http://pickyourtrail.com — our website | https://apple.co/2mBMqI0 — our mobile app for travel concierge.

We have had about 15,000+ travellers who have planned their dream vacation with us in the Free Independent traveller segment.

We are currently a team of 185 members.

What do you plan to achieve in the next 2–3 years?

Broadly 3–4 things we would be focusing on, one obviously acquire more customers on the digital medium, try and build you know our own digital acquisition channel that’s number 1.

Number 2 is you know on tier 2- tier 3 towns where digital penetration is still not very high but still there is a significant amount of people taking trips out there, how do we go to that audience and become top of mind for that audience, So if you look at it audience wise the digital-first audience is what we want to capture and then tier 2- tier 3 towns.

The next focus is on beefing up the tech team and overall tech capabilities. how do we ensure that our product innovation efforts continue to be one of the best in the industry?

There is also a larger focus on taking this product global. End of the day there is a European going to the US or an Australian going to Bali and the product is suitable even for them. We also want to try and understand what it takes to build traction in those markets.

While all this may not be possible in the next 6–10 months but this is the broad themes we want to focus and kind of drive over the next 2–3 years.

Mr Srinath Shankar | Co-founder, Logic | http://bit.ly/2wWv6PU

Srinath is the calm that every org needs. His ability to break down the everyday chaos into digestible smaller units is priceless. Srinath enjoys both math and airplane modelling! He is the brain behind the routing, pricing and personalisation algorithm at Pickyourtrail. He holds a Bachelors in Mathematics and an MBA from NMIMS Bombay. His ability to talk across subjects right from Sitcoms, bikes, wartime books, plane building to complex algorithms make him a great person to hang out with!

Mr Hari Ganapathy | Co-founder, Magic | http://bit.ly/2x59SzH

Hari is your quintessential jack-of-all-trades. An MBA grad from IIM-B, Hari has dabbled roles across sales, marketing, design and strategy. An avid traveller, hari’ passion for travel combined with his stint at InMobi led to the birth of Pickyourtrail. Hari strongly believes that travel has the power to change people’s perception of life. Having been on many life altering journeys, the trans-siberian train ride is hari’s dream journey. In a parallel universe Hari is running a design consultancy firm and also pursuing a PhD in consumer behaviour.